Sunday, January 10, 2010

Three Great Articles on Moderate Muslim Action

by Ryan Mauro

Pajamas Media has a great article about a moderate Muslim organization called LIM in Norway that is reacting to the attack on one of the Prophet Mohammed cartoonists by organizing a demonstration for free speech.

The spokesperson, Sheikh Rehman, is challenging the Islamic Council of Norway to do the same, but says he thinks they won’t do it because they worry they will “lose face in the Muslim world.” Rehman even supports the publication of the cartoons, saying:

Muhammed didn’t want to be depicted, because he didn’t want to be turned into a false god. When Muslims believe that depictions of the prophet insult him, then they are turning him into just such a false god. There should thus be no reason not to caricature him. I would go so far as to say that Muslim leaders are unqualified.

The second article comes from the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada.

Twenty imams that are patrt of the group published a fatwa on January 8 saying any attack on the U.S. or Canada is an attack on all the Muslims living there, and “Islam requires Muslims to stand up to this evil.” And there’s also this very important line in the fatwa:

In fact, the constitutions of the United States and Canada are very close to the Islamic guiding principles of human rights and freedom. There is no conflict between the Islamic values of freedom and justice and the Canadian /US values of freedom and justice.

Irfan al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz in The Weekly Standardwrite about the All-India Ulema Mashaikh Board, and how the group’s secretary-general has called for Wahhabist control of the country’s Islamic institutions to be ended.

They write that the majority of Sunni Muslims in India and Pakistan “are conservative but adhere to the spiritual Islam of Sufism.” He even puts a number on it, saying 80% of India’s Muslims practice Sufi traditions.